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Typosquatters roam unchecked in India

Wrongly typing out an alphabet while keying in a popular website name can actually help some people make money.

May 3, 2010, 02:29PM IST

BANGALORE: Wrongly typing out an alphabet while keying in a popular website name can actually help some people make money.

Type goole.co.in instead of google.com or youube .com in place of youtube.com and you will land in a proxy site loaded with advertisement links-a phenomenon known as typosquatting, a form of cybersquatting.

The registered domain will have ads of services similar to the original one so that the user who made a typing mistake will click on these links, generating revenue for the bogus domain. It is safe to say that there would be a typosquatted duplicate for any website with a considerable national readership. "Typosquatting is registration of a domain name similar to a popular name with a small change in spelling so that users who mistakenly type the wrong spelling would end up in the alternate site," says Na Vijayashankar, Bangalore-based cyber law expert and promoter of education website cyberlawcollege.com. Typosquatting is a declared offence in the US.

The 1999 Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) prohibits anyone from registering or using domains misleadingly similar to a trademark or famous name. Unfortunately, the Indian law does not deal with typosquatting, says Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court advocate and a veteran in cyber offence cases.

"The Indian Information Technology Act, 2000, the only legislation available in India pertaining to use of computers, computer systems, computer networks, computer resources and communication devices, does not deal with domain name issues. So much so, that even the amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000 have not dealt with any issue pertaining to domain name disputes," said Mr Duggal.

Even though there are innumerable instances where popular Indian websites are typosquatted, not even a single case has been registered against typosquatters in India; the major difficulties being proving a wrongful intent and tracing the owner of the domain.

For example, Indianrailway.com and indianrailways.com are ty-posquatted sites of Indian Railways, the official sites being www.indianrail.gov.in and www.indianrailways.gov.in. Both the ty-posquatted sites display offer for sale. When checked, indianrailway .com leads to a US-based domain seller and indianrailways .com leads to an UK-based hosting service provider.

Website-owner apathy is also a reason behind typosquatters thriving. All major firms whom ET contacted, including leading private banks, were indifferent towards the existence of typosquatters, mainly because the threat is not as big as cybersquatting, which would have taken off the original domain name from them.

"Our IT department regularly tracks such sites, and we take necessary actions when we come across one," said an executive of a leading private bank, who requested anonymity. Also, unlike phishing websites that extract the user's details with malicious intentions, typosquatters are interested in the easy money they get when the user clicks the advertisement link. "It is difficult to consider typosquatting as an offence. It is open to the name owner to bring a trademark-related domain name dispute under the charge of 'deceptively similar name' or 'confusingly similar name'," says Mr Vijayashankar. "However if the look and feel of the site is different and the nature of activity is different, it is difficult to prove any wrongful activity."

Duggal says Indian laws do not even recognise cybersquatting as an offence and "as such, the question of typosquatting being declared as an offence in India does not arise."

Ways to get domain name back For the purposes of getting a domain name back under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), three conditions have to be fulfilled: The disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights The respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the disputed domain name The disputed domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith.

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